Birmingham Trust & Savings Co. v. Acacia Mut. Life Ass'n, 6 Div. 693.

• Decision Date: 09 October 1930
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 693.
• Parties: BIRMINGHAM TRUST & SAVINGS CO. v. ACACIA MUT. LIFE ASS'N.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

130 So. 327

221 Ala. 561

BIRMINGHAM TRUST & SAVINGS CO. v. ACACIA MUT. LIFE ASS'N.

6 Div. 693.

Supreme Court of Alabama

October 9, 1930

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jefferson County; Richard V. Evans Judge.

Action on a policy of life insurance by the Birmingham Trust &amp Savings Company, as executor of the estate of Andrew J Bethea, deceased, against the Acacia Mutual Life Association. From a judgment for defendant, plaintiff appeals.

Transferred from the Court of Appeals under Code 1923, § 7326.

Affirmed.

Altman & Koenig and J. Edgar Bowron, all of Birmingham, for appellant.

Howard W. Kacy, of Washington, D. C., and O. D. Street & Son, of Birmingham, for appellee.

ANDERSON C.J.

The trial court did not commit reversible error in giving the defendant's requested charge set out in the fourth assignment of error and which we number 4 on the margin of the record. It asserts a truism and the criticism against same is highly technical, though perhaps justified, in a sense, by some of the courts and text-writers. As we understand, the charge means this and nothing more, that, as the law presumes that the intestate came to his death from natural causes, it was incumbent upon the defendant to show that he took his own life, and, when the defendant introduced the certificate showing that he died from self-inflicted strangulation, said certificate was prima facie proof of said recital under section 1087 of the Code of 1923. It then became incumbent upon the plaintiff to go forward and rebut or overcome the prima facie case. This was the plain simple meaning of the charge whether it used the word burden, duty, or that it was incumbent upon the plaintiff to go forward with the evidence, and the purpose or effect of same could not have misled a common-sense jury who are not presumed to be versed in finespun theoretical distinctions attempted by law-writers between the shifting of the burden of proof and going forward with the evidence as the proof develops prima facie cases or defenses.

In 10 R. C. L. page 897, § 45, under the heading of "Shifting of Burden" it is said: "The term 'burden of proof' has two distinct meanings. By the one is meant the duty of establishing the truth of a given proposition or issue by such a quantum of evidence as the law demands in the case in which the issue arises; by the other is meant the duty of producing evidence at the beginning or at any subsequent stage of the trial, in order to make or meet a prima facie case. Generally speaking, the burden of proof, in the sense of the duty of producing evidence, passes from party to party as the case progresses, while the burden of proof, meaning the obligation to...